1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, apparatus, and computer instructions for updating a document, such as a portal page.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet is a global network of computers and networks joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from a protocol of the sending network to a protocol used by the receiving network. On the Internet, any computer may communicate with any other computer with information traveling over the Internet through a variety of languages, also referred to as protocols. The set of protocols used on the Internet is called transmission control protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
The Internet has revolutionized both communications and commerce, as well as, being a source of both information and entertainment. For many users, email is a widely used format to communicate over the Internet. Additionally, the Internet is also used for real-time voice conversations.
With respect to transferring data over the Internet, the World Wide Web environment is used. This environment is also referred to simply as “the Web”. The Web is a mechanism used to access information over the Internet. In the Web environment, servers and clients effect data transaction using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), a known protocol for handling the transfer of various data files, such as text files, graphic images, animation files, audio files, and video files.
On the Web, the information in various data files is formatted for presentation to a user by a standard page description language, the hypertext markup language (HTML). Documents using HTML are also referred to as Web pages. Web pages are connected to each other through links or hyperlinks. These links allow for a connection or link to other Web resources identified by a universal resource identifier (URI), such as a uniform resource locator (URL).
A browser is a program used to look at and interact with all of the information on the Web. A browser is able to display Web pages and to traverse links to other Web pages. Resources, such as Web pages, are retrieved by a browser, which is capable of submitting a request for the resource. This request typically includes an identifier, such as, for example, a URL. As used herein, a browser is an application used to navigate or view information or data in any distributed database, such as the Internet or the World Wide Web. A user may enter a domain name through a graphical user interface (GUI) for the browser to access a source of content. The domain name is automatically converted to the IP address by a domain name system (DNS), which is a service that translates the symbolic name entered by the user into an IP address by looking up the domain name in a database.
The browser includes a user interface, which is a GUI that allows the user to interface or communicate with another browser. This interface provides for a selection of various functions through menus and allows for navigation. For example, a menu may allow a user to perform various functions, such as saving a file, opening a new window, displaying a history, and entering a URL.
With respect to obtaining information on the Internet, portal based user interfaces are becoming increasingly popular because these types of interfaces allow the user to see user interfaces, also referred to as portlet windows, which gather data from many different sources going into a single hypertext mark-up language (HTML) page. One problem that arises with joining these different portlet windows into a single HTML page is that the driving action from one portlet window causes all of the portlet windows to be reloaded in the browser. This type of refreshing of the entire portal page has a number of bad side affects. For example, data entered into the other portlet window by the user may be lost. Additionally, the browser scroll position is reset. This situation causes the portal page to jump from a portlet window of interest to another view. Also, having to reload content for each portlet window causes increase overload because each portlet on the server generating data for a portlet window has to regenerate the code for the page. Also, increased network traffic occurs because HTML code for all of the portlet windows is reset, regardless of whether the content has changed.
Two commonly used techniques to avoid this problem are to use frames or applets. The down side of using frames is that the width and height of the frame must be specified in absolute dimensions. This situation causes the portlet to not resize when the browser resizes. Such a situation is unacceptable in many circumstances. Applets have a down side in that an action from another portlet window will force the applet to reinitialize its state. Initially, applets have a greater footprint in the browser and may raise security concerns with some users.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for refreshing content in a portlet window.